Common bottle list

ORIGINAL: coolbottles

If  anyone has some of the common dr kilmers,dr pierce dr seth arnolds,chamberlains,carters in green, citron, yellow, or amber let me know I would be happy to make you an offer.[]

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here is a group of five, I think all are in good shapes and decent color. The one on the left has a really crude lip, it kinda looks like chips, but I am 90% sure it is all inmaking. Make me afair offer on them all, you can have them & I will pay shipping.

Lip of the one on the left. The one on the right is BIM, blown in mold, the other four are early machine made as a lot of the colored Pierces are.

I'll second that Mike.
I started digging bottles to collect vintage things I could find in the ground and bring them back to life for others to enjoy. I'm not out there trying to dig up money. I actually get bored with my metal detector.[] It's the appreciation for the past and history of the item for me. I only want to know values for trading, or selling if I fall on hard times for money. Also for when I pass on, my children don't just give them away.lol Just my thoughts on the subject.

*I'll take all the Jaudice Bitters yall don't want.[]

Figured I'd bump this up for the new guys.

Perfect time to bump, but can I add there is not much worthless stuff before 1940, it is just not worth selling.

GuntherHess said:

In general those listed are common bottles but I see at least a half dozen bottles on that list that have variants worth bring home.
Its hard to make generalized statements because many popular products were made over a long stretch of time. Pond's Extract for example has a pontil marked version and machine made version with basically the same embossing.
Its just as important to learn to estimate dates of bottles as it is to memorize the embossing.

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I think this comment is worth bumping for the newbies as well. Definitely a lot of exceptions on that list. A generic citrate of magnesia is nearly worthless but a coloured version from a local druggist can be worth hundreds, for example. And I'm surprised to see Dalby's Carminative on there, is there even a common recent version of those? I only know of it as a somewhat common pontil bottle which definitely isn't worthless. Pretty sure a few of these are a bit more desirable today than they were in 2004 as well, like Hood's Sarsaparilla I definitely wouldn't consider worthless, not here in Canada anyway, even if it is common.

I think my advice to newbies would instead be to not spend very much on bottles for the first year or so of collecting, and to take home anything that looks interesting if you find it. And if you do buy stuff focus on local bottles, because that's likely what you'll end up interested in later on and especially local paper label bottles because they often only show up once and you can't dig them anyway.

CanadianBottles said:

I think this comment is worth bumping for the newbies as well. Definitely a lot of exceptions on that list. A generic citrate of magnesia is nearly worthless but a coloured version from a local druggist can be worth hundreds, for example. And I'm surprised to see Dalby's Carminative on there, is there even a common recent version of those? I only know of it as a somewhat common pontil bottle which definitely isn't worthless. Pretty sure a few of these are a bit more desirable today than they were in 2004 as well, like Hood's Sarsaparilla I definitely wouldn't consider worthless, not here in Canada anyway, even if it is common.

I think my advice to newbies would instead be to not spend very much on bottles for the first year or so of collecting, and to take home anything that looks interesting if you find it. And if you do buy stuff focus on local bottles, because that's likely what you'll end up interested in later on and especially local paper label bottles because they often only show up once and you can't dig them anyway.

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As someone who is interested in history, I'm personally interested in seeing variations in bottles over time.

This means that the most frequent (& worthless) bottles are the best ones to demonstrate changes over many years. If you find a hoard of worthless jars, jot down the makers marks, factory & year codes, mold #s etc...
This way, you could actually graph out the distribution of common bottles at one or many sites according to numerous variables. I'm sure that you could extract some interesting data from these worthless bottles.
It might be interesting, for instance, to note if usage of a certain product coincided with local institutions or historical events etc...

I also must add that I dig up paper labels all the time, it's worth it to very carefully handle bottles, because occasionally you'll find interesting bits of history!
These are all from local pre-1920 stores, and I'm not aware of any other paper labels, or other bottles existing from them.
Yet, at first glance, when covered in dirt, this was a slick Owens prescription bottle, a Pluto Water bottle and a cracked pharmaceutical bottle. All absolutely worthless? Monetarily speaking yes, but not in terms of personal interest.